We are closing the café early tonight. As if they could sense the absence of the owner, customers are not coming today. We choose not to be industrious workers. I feel zero guilt—like the time I peed in the communal bath. Sungyun followed the dentist to try out his new car. There’s nobody to bother me and Eunyong. It feels like the café is under siege. Is this what Jimin was talking about when she talked about seizing the means of production? Would she give me a noogie for simplifying her ideas if she knew I was making this connection?

I take a beer from the fridge. It’s an imported kind that I’ve never had before. Eunyong slices a pineapple for snacks. “Bring some bananas and cheese too!”

We raise our glasses for a toast. We can replace the café’s food we’re eating, and I have some spare money.

I’ve been tutoring the dentist in German, but the further we progress on the lessons, the less sure I become about the lessons I am “teaching.” Whenever I get stuck, the dentist quickly looks up the word in the dictionary. Eunyong ostentatiously walks by our table to mutter, “Who’s tutoring who?” That bitch. Her knowledge of English only extends to greetings like Hello, oh my God, sorry, and she doesn’t know a word of German, not even the alphabet.

What matters is that I got some money from tutoring my older student. A small part of me feels guilty—he gave me twenty thousand won in advance, and we’ve only met twice for the lessons. But then he gave me another envelope of money. I’ve decided I’m going to study German hard myself and teach him well this month. There isn’t any part-time gig as easy as this one. I don’t want him to look for a tutor who is actually competent. If I save this tutoring money for the next three months, I can cover my university tuition. Then I could proudly announce my official emancipation from my dad and declare why I left home.

“Eunyong! Bring more beer! I can’t even get up right now.”

“You sound so drunk. I saw you throw up earlier. We gotta stop drinking. We’ve been drinking all these … shit. How much is this gonna cost us?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine … Just bring more, okay!” As I yell, my voice rings in my ears. It sounds unfamiliar, foreign—like someone else’s voice. Like when you record your voice on a blank cassette tape and play it back.

I used to record my favorite pop songs on empty cassettes, singing into the tape to hear my own singing. I thought I lost those tapes, but then I discovered that my stepbrother had been listening to them. He used to peek in to watch me bathe too. Crazy asshole.

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